
E9LB BODE 

9 

■ 

W m 

BE 

mm 
- 



Si 



H9&& 



^■1 






■ 



B 

I 



|ne 5 Tory 

OF K 

6KTHeN 




H* L, R^t^ pfe- 



il'2+>t'ML. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
iB V 545 7 

C^Hp..— Oxip^rig^i Jfta 

Shelt;C4-1^ 4 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




Japanese Student. 



THE STORY 



A HEATHEN 



AND HIS 



TRANSFORMATION 



BY 

H. L. RE. 



; 4. 1890 V 



5 4 



WYZtf ILLUSTRATIONS 



BOSTON AND CHICAGO 
Congregational ^tinbag-^c^ool anb Jublis^ittg JSotietg 







Copyright, 1890, 
Bv Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society. 



To the Boys of this Generation 

WHO ARE WILLING 

TO STRIVE FOR THE HIGHEST, 

THIS BOOK, 

AS BOTH AN INSPIRATION AND A HELP, 

Is Betucatetu 



PREFATORY. 



The history herein given is true. The sources of 
the writer's information are wholly authentic. The 
young man is living and working ; and if his life 
thus far is both an augury and a pledge of what 
it is to be in the future, results beneficent and vast 
wait upon his oncoming years. 

For obvious reasons names of places have been 
omitted and that of the hero of the history changed. 

Much that would add interest to the narrative 
can not be told, while all that is told is wholly 
within the actual facts. 

H. L. R. 



®l men tfjere are enough 
<&{ man tfjere is not. 
Wake men to be mtn t 
&no a man gou bill be* 
<Ect like a man, 
&no a man gou 'mill become* 

— Stanza of Japanese poetry. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Heathen's Country. — Where it is and 

what it is n 

II. The Heathen's Country. {Continued.) — A 

glance at its history 17 

III. The Heathen's Country. {Continued.) — Its 

recent astounding progress 22 

IV. The Heathen Himself. — Ancestry, birth, 

village and school life 32 

V. How the Heathen went on. — Preparatory 

school and college life 38 

VI. The Heathen at the Capital. — Steps up- 
ward. Life in Tokyo , . 45 

VII. The Heathen's Transformation. — A 

thoughtful decision, and what came of it . . 55 

VIII. The Transformed Heathen's Crucial Test. 

— Life at a naval station. A beginning ... 61 

IX. Succeeding Events in our Hero's History 72 

X. The Conclusion.— Why the story has been told 80 



THE STORY OF A HEATHEN. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE HEATHEN'S COUNTRY. 
WHERE IT IS AND WHAT IT IS. 

/^FF the south-western coast of Asia, 
400 miles from China, 270 from 
Kamtchatka, and about 5,000 miles from 
California, lies the Empire of Japan. 

It is made up of islands, of which 
there are nearly, if not quite, one 
thousand. 

The largest of these islands are 
Hondo, Kiushiu, Shikoku, and Yesso. 

On the main islands a solid mass of 
mountainous elevations runs continu- 
ously throughout their entire length, 



1 2 The Story of a Heathen. 

and on the smaller islands, in general, 
the ground rises irregularly from the 
border to central and lofty ranges. 

In geologic ages volcanic action must 
have been violent and continuous, hun- 
dreds of mountains now in repose hav- 
ing once been furnaces of living fire. 
In recent times exhibitions of volcanic 
fury have been of frequent and astound- 
ing occurrence, in whicj^ vast industries 
have been overwhelmed and thousands 
of human lives destroyed. 

Besides volcanic disturbances, earth- 
quake shocks are common ; and in the 
history of the country frequent mention 
is made of the disappearance of moun- 
tains, and of villages and cities either 
shaken to destruction or suddenly en- 
gulfed. 

Cyclones are born and bred in some 
of its latitudes, and during three months 



The Heathen s Country. 13 

of the year that invisible and dreaded 
agent of ruin, the typhoon, may be 
expected. 

Turning from the dark to the light 
side : the seasons come and go with 
almost perfect regularity ; the climate is 
the temperate zone in perfection ; ice 
rarely forms over an inch in thickness, 
and snow, except in the mountainous 
regions, is scarcely ever seen over 
twenty-four hours old. 

The winds from the ocean temper 
both the heat of summer and the cold 
of winter, and make most of the country 
healthful and inviting as a place of resi- 
dence for all the year. The sky is that 
of Italy, and many times the air has a 
softness and a balm unknown elsewhere. 

Nearly all the useful metals are found 
in this island empire : gold, silver, cop- 
per, iron, tin, and lead. Petroleum 



14 The Story of a Heathen. 

issues from the ground in many places, 
and in some the Japanese peasant cooks 
his food with lighted natural gas escap- 
ing from the end of a bamboo tube. 
The soil is fertile. Rice fields have 
yielded abundantly for centuries by the 
ordinary use of common fertilizing ma- 
terial and irrigation, and vegetables pe- 
culiar to semi-tropical latitudes grow in 
wondrous profusion. 

The islands are famous for fine forests. 
Thirty-six varieties of timber trees are 
known to exist, meeting every demand 
of barbarous or civilized life. 

Flowers abound everywhere, and ever- 
green plants and shrubs give to the 
country the seeming of perpetual sum- 
mer. 

Of sea-birds there is no end. The 
stork and heron, now, as in earlier 
times, tread the fields in unique beauty, 



The Heathens Country, 1 5 

or awaken admiration as they grace- 
fully sail in the upper air; and wild 
ducks and geese from time immemorial 
have summered in the north and win- 
tered in the south of the M Sunrise 
Empire." 

Nowhere in the world are edible fish 
found in such numbers and variety as in 
Japan ; the countless bays and gulfs are 
full of them. In the north the salmon 
supply is inexhaustible, and in the fresh- 
water streams all over the islands this 
staple article of food waits alike at the 
door of the rich and the poor, the prince 
and the peasant. 

With a healthy climate, a fertile soil, 
vast mineral wealth, sea-food that grows 
more abundant, instead of less, as the 
centuries come and go ; with scenery 
rendered indescribably charming by 
mountain and valley, rock and river ; 



1 6 The Story of a Heathen. 

with irregular and almost endless bor- 
der-lines that Old Ocean without cessa- 
tion either laves or lashes, there is 
hardly a country that is more inviting 
as a residence, or better adapted to the 
substantial growth of all that pertains 
to the good and glory of progressive, 
civilized life. 




Japanese Court Dress. 

(From life.) 



CHAPTER II. 

THE HEATHEN'S COUNTRY. CONTINUED. 

A GLANCE AT ITS HISTORY. 

/ T^HE origin of the Japanese, like that 
of all other Oriental peoples, is 
lost in the obscurity of remote and prob- 
lematical tradition. 

Not long ago a distinguished writer 
published several volumes in which he 
undertook to prove that the Japanese 
were the ten lost tribes of Israel ; but 
his success was by no means complete, 
and whether or not they are the remote 
descendants of Abraham is as yet a 
matter of dubious conjecture. 

Passing out of the realm of tradition 
into that of authentic record, the first 



1 8 The Story of a Heathen. 

emperor lived and reigned about 667 
B.C., in the years between Lycurgus and 
Solon of Grecian history, six hundred 
years before England and Germany and 
one thousand years before France. 

This line of rulers has continued to 
the present time, the present reigning 
emperor being the one hundred and 
twenty-fourth in direct and unbroken 
succession. 

Passing over two thousand years, 
whose history is found in reasonable 
completeness in Japanese books, it may 
be said that Japan was wholly unknown 
to Europe, until Marco Polo published 
his book of travels, early in the four- 
teenth century. 

In 1542 three Portuguese sailors, 
having deserted from their own ship 
and taken possession of a Chinese 
junk, were wrecked upon one of the 



The Heathen s Country. 1 9 

islands of Japan. These were the first 
Europeans that are known to have taken 
up their residence in that empire. 

Three years later a Portuguese ad- 
venturer, sailing in a Chinese pirate- 
vessel, was driven by adverse winds into 
a small Japanese harbor. He was cor- 
dially received, and soon carried back 
to the Portuguese settlements in China 
such a report of the riches of Japan 
that great numbers of traders immedi- 
ately flocked thither. 

Missionaries of the Roman Catholic 
faith soon followed the merchants, and 
in 1549 the celebrated " Apostle to the 
Indies," St. Francis Xavier, landed. 
They were welcomed to the hearts of 
the people, and the conquest of the 
country for Christianity seemed but the 
work of a few years. 

Soon, however, the Japanese became 



20 The Story of a Heathen. 

distrustful of the Portuguese, whom suc- 
cess in business and in missionary oper- 
ations had made disdainfully indifferent 
to the rights and feelings of the natives. 
In 1587 the missionaries were ban- 
ished by a royal edict, and during the 
next forty years, multitudes of native 
Christians, who had entered into a con- 
spiracy with the Portuguese and Span- 
iards to overthrow the imperial throne, 
and at length, instigated by these for- 
eigners, had risen in open rebellion, 
were massacred, and the country closed 
to every outside person and influence, 
except a single port where the Dutch, 
under most rigid restrictions, were per- 
mitted to continue a circumscribed and 
limited trade with the empire, and for 
two hundred years Japan was practically 
unknown to the outside world — asleep 
during the waking centuries. 



The Heathen s Country. 2 1 

In February, 1854, Commodore Perry, 
with a squadron of seven ships of war, 
entered the harbor of Yeddo ; and in 
March of the same year, after protracted 
and difficult negotiations, Japan opened 
her doors a little and with great reluc- 
tance to this Western nation. 

Three years later Hon. Townsend 
Harris, United States Consul - General 
for Japan, negotiated a new treaty, and 
this hermit empire became accessible to 
the civilizing influences of diplomatic, 
commercial, and Christian intercourse 
with the American people and the other 
nations of the world. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HEATHEN'S COUNTRY. CONTINUED. 

ITS RECENT ASTOUNDING PROGRESS. 

"N TEVER in human history has there 
been change so rapid as has taken 
place in Japan during the last twenty 
years. 

Up to 1868 the doctrine of the divine 
descent of the Mikado, held for more 
than twenty-five hundred years, was 
everywhere accepted. His right to the 
worship of his subjects as God was uni- 
versally recognized, and the idolatrous 
practice was equally widely observed. 
He was the " Son of Heaven," the 
"Center of the Universe," "Lord over 
all." 



The Heathen s Country. 2 3 

Sacred in his person, his feet were 
never permitted to touch the ground. 
His subjects, with the exception of the 
most meager few, never saw him. He 
dwelt in magnificent, unapproachable, 
deified seclusion. 

Under him was a man — the Tycoon 
— properly, Shogun, meaning " next in 
supreme command," in whom, either 
through assumption or otherwise, all 
temporal power was vested. 

Under the Shogun were scores of 
feudal lords — rulers over provinces 
which they had either stolen or con- 
quered, and from whom his advisers 
came, and of whom his court was com- 
posed. 

Under these were the Samurai, the 
11 two-sworded " men, who had won ter- 
ritory and renown for their lords, and 
who were not only the soldiers of the 



24 The Story of a Heathen. 

empire, but its most public-spirited and 
best educated class. 

Below these were the unrecognized 
millions without power, without influ- 
ence, and without the possibility of 
change for the better. 

In 1868, in a revolution, for which all 
the years of this century had been pre- 
paring, but which the opening of the 
country to foreigners precipitated, the 
Shogunate was abolished ; feudalism 
died; the " two-sworded " men changed 
masters, and from the shoulders of the 
millions of common people whom caste 
had crushed the burden was lifted. 

The Mikado became human. 

He left his spiritual capital, Kyoto, 
and took up his residence in his tem- 
poral capital, Tokyo. 

He began to be seen of men ; to walk 
with them, talk with them, and in 1869, 



The Heathen s Country, 25 

in presence of the grandees of the em- 
pire, solemnly swore: "That a delibera- 
tive assembly should be formed ; that all 
measures should be decided by public 
opinion ; that the uncivilized customs of 
former times should be abolished ; that 
impartiality should be the basis of all 
governmental action ; and that the in- 
tellect and learning of the world should 
be sought in laying the foundations 
of the empire ! " From that time to 
this he has been the leader of a nation 
whose progress has no parallel in hu- 
man history. 

In material matters barbarism is 
everywhere giving way to civilization. 

On the sea is a navy with all modern 
appliances and inventions, as formidable 
as it is complete. 

On the shore are light-houses, and 
dock-yards, and ship-building stations. 



26 The Story of a Heathen. 

On the land is an army, modeled after 
the French and German military systems, 
railroads, telegraphs, telephones, post- 
routes, post-offices, etc. 

In the cities are street railways, a fire 
department, police, national banks, sav- 
ings banks, mints, newspapers, book- 
publishing houses ; and here and there 
all over the country, as time has made 
it possible and the demands of business 
required, there are paper-mills, cotton - 
mills, woolen-mills, foundries, etc. 

In the department of education there 
is the Imperial University at Tokyo, 
more than forty colleges, and a common 
school system, organized on the plan of 
that in the United States, and where 
the English language is now universally 
taught, that is rapidly extending all over 
the empire. 

In social reforms — the abolition of 



The Heathens Country. 2 7 

public and peculiar customs, improve- 
ments in dress, change in the modes of 
living, better dwellings and food, and 
especially in the emancipation of woman 
— progress is nowhere larger or more 
beneficent. 

A woman's college, specially for the 
education of the women of the higher 
classes, is already in existence, and girls' 
schools of a high order are rapidly in- 
creasing. 

The moral progress that Japan has 
made is most marvelous of all. 

Owing largely to the troubles that 
arose in the sixteenth century, in which 
the Roman Catholic missionaries, and 
afterwards their native converts, had 
part, there was wide and strenuous 
opposition to the introduction of any 
foreign religion ; and for a considerable 
time, by reason of this prejudice and 



28 The Story of a Heathen. 

fear, it was almost impossible to circulate 
Christian literature or preach the gospel 
in the quietest way. 

To add to the perplexity of the situa- 
tion, as soon as the doors of the empire 
were opened, infidelity and materialism 
came in like a flood. German profess- 
ors and teachers openly taught both in 
government schools, and the educated 
young men of the empire became rap- 
idly acquainted with the works of Hux- 
ley, Tyndal, Darwin, Spencer, and Mill 
— men, who, however great as thinkers 
and speculatists, were not fitted to lead 
a heathen nation from its idol darkness 
into Christian light. 

Infidel and materialistic books of all 
kinds were introduced and translated ; 
so that before any part of the New Tes- 
tament was ready for circulation, and 
allowed to be circulated in the Japanese 



The Heathen s Country. 29 

tongue, the land was filled with specu- 
lative beliefs, which Christianity found 
harder to battle against than the original 
faiths of the heathens themselves. 

In 1859, the year the first three ports 
were opened, missionaries sent by four 
different societies entered Japan ; but so 
great was the opposition and prejudice 
that after five years only one Japanese 
had been baptized, and after twelve 
years only ten had openly professed 
Christianity. 

But the crowning marvel is this: that 
during the last seven years, chiefly dur- 
ing the last three, the change in public 
sentiment with reference to Christianity 
has been well-nigh complete. 

At first Japan took Western science 
and the arts with infidelity. Now, not 
only government officials, the thinkers 
throughout the realm, the public press, 



30 The Story of a Heathen. 

but multitudes of the common people 
have discovered that it is impossible to 
have the fruit of the best civilization 
without having the tree upon which it 
grows. The reaction is immense, and 
the cities by the sea and the hamlets in 
the mountain valleys are sending their 
voices over the ocean, asking for men 
and women to teach Christianity. All 
government impediments to the intro- 
duction of the Christian religion have 
been removed, and Sunday has been 
set apart — established as a day of rest. 

With reference to the data of Chris- 
tian progress it may be said : — 

That on the first of January, 1889, 
there were eleven theological semina- 
ries, more than two hundred churches, 
between three and four hundred Sunday- 
schools ; in round numbers, twenty-five 
thousand Christians, with constant and 



The Heathen s Country. 3 1 

rapid increase since ; and, most wonder- 
ful of all, the reasonable probability that 
when the clock of time strikes nineteen 
hundred, Christianity will be as much 
an established religion in Japan as it is 
in the United States of America. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HEATHEN HIMSELF. 
ANCESTRY, BIRTH, VILLAGE AND SCHOOL LIFE. 

/^N the third largest island of the 

Japanese Empire, Kiushiu, lying 

in its south-western corner, in the state 

of Kumamoto, in the county of , 

in the town of , on the fifth day of 

March, 1862, eight years after Commo- 
dore Perry concluded his initial nego- 
tiation, and five years after Townsend 
Harris had made the treaty which put 
38,000,000 of people within reach of 
a better civilization, and added a new 
member to the great family of progress- 
ive nations, our heathen, whom we will 
call Corecadsu, was born. 

32 




Rain Coat, Made from Rice Straw. 

(From life.) 



The Heathen Himself, 33 

His family was among the oldest, — 
a matter of great significance in Japa- 
nese society, — of great respectability, 
and obtained a livelihood in a manner 
common to those of its station and 
rank. 

Up to six years of age Corecadsu 
lived the ordinary life of children in all 
tropical, Oriental lands. He wore, for 
much of the year, scant clothing or 
none. He reveled in all manner of 
childhood sports, and, having the pre- 
cocity common to many children among 
the Japanese, he was older at five than 
the average American boy is at seven. 
At six he began to attend the village 
school. Following immemorial custom, 
the morning session began at six o'clock, 
which at some seasons of the year was 
considerably before the break of day. 

The school-house was more than an 



34 The Story of a Heathen. 

English mile from the family residence, 
and as his guide and protector in the 
dark mornings, his grandmother, well 
on in years, used to lead him through 
the silent streets to the appointed place. 

This person was a woman of great 
good sense, with a clear perception of 
what is absolutely needed, whether in 
Christian or heathen lands, in a boy in 
order that he may reach his highest ; 
and so, properly desirous that her grand- 
son should become both eminent and 
useful in some sphere, she took frequent 
occasion, during these morning walks 
and at other times, to present to her 
sensitive and intent charge, then stand- 
ing on the threshold of life, the possi- 
bilities that lay before him if from the 
beginning he did his very best each day. 

And the words, weighty and wise, of 
the heathen woman were not lost. 



The Heathen Himself. 35 

Reaching the school-room, from six 
o'clock to eight, following another 
strange custom, the boys shouted their 
lessons with the fullest strength of their 
lungs and at the top of their voices, 
making what would be complete bedlam 
to unaccustomed ears. 

At eight o'clock they went home for 
breakfast. At ten o'clock they assem- 
bled again. At twelve o'clock came an 
hour's recess for lunch. At four o'clock 
the study of the day was over ; and 
away they went to their homes, slates 
and copy-books in their hands, ink- 
bottles slung to their girdles, hands and 
faces smeared with the black fluid, and 
all making a strange clatter with their 
clogs as they dashed down the stony 
streets. 

In this public school Corecadsu con- 
tinued for five years, from six to eleven. 



36 The Story of a Heathen. 

He then entered what is called a " mid- 
dle school," where Japanese and Chinese 
literature were taught, and where a good 
foundation was laid, upon which to build 
in subsequent time. 

At fourteen years of age he graduated 
from this school, taking rank as a scholar 
among the highest. 

Reaching this period of his life, with 
nothing about him that would specially 
distinguish him from a million other 
boys in the Mikado's dominion, the 
question came up in his family for dis- 
cussion and decision, as it has and will 
in many another in America as well as 
Japan, whether Corecadsu should con- 
tinue to study, or enter upon some com- 
mon employment, wherein to provide 
for himself and help in the support of 
the family. 

The profits of his fathers business, 



The Heathen Himself. 37 

increased by such little as at the best 
the industry of the mother could add, 
hardly more than sufficed to furnish 
food and shelter and clothing for the 
household, and hence it seemed an 
impossibility to provide the money 
needed to send him to a preparatory 
school and afterwards to college. 

But the desire of the boy to continue 
his studies, and his willingness to make 
his expenditures as small as possible, 
finally led to the decision that he 
should go on with his well-begun edu- 
cation with such help as from their 
narrow means the family were able to 
give. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOW THE HEATHEN WENT ON. 
PREPARATORY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE LIFE. 

TN every life there is a turning-point. 
It generally comes when one is 
young ; it may come later on. 

Some one has said that in ninety 
cases out of a hundred we settle our 
destiny in the first fifth of our three- 
score and ten years. 

This turning-point came to Corecadsu 
when, the matter having been settled 
that his family would pay, so far as they 
could, the necessary expenses of his col- 
lege course, there was put upon him the 
responsibility of the use or misuse of 
the opportunity which the self-sacrifice 

38 



How the Heathen went on. 39 

of those who loved him enabled him to 
have ; all of which he clearly saw and 
deliberately assumed. 

From ancient times the Japanese peo- 
ple have been divided into what may be 
called hereditary classes, each person, as 
a rule, remaining through life in the 
class into which he was born. 

The only possibility of exaltation — 
going from a lower to a higher class — 
was through the possession of a worthy 
character, wide knowledge, and large 
ability. 

The family of Corecadsu belonged to 
a class, not an unusual thing anywhere, 
from which it was possible to go up ; 
and so, with a purpose the worthiest, the 
boy resolved that he would rise higher 
— attain a rank in which he could be- 
come an official in the government, then 
one of the supreme ends of Japanese 
ambition. 



4° The Story of a Heathen. 

The obstacles between his present 
condition and the one upon which his 
heart became slowly but surely set were 
all but insurmountable ; but he deter- 
mined that, at whatever cost, they 
should be overcome. 

Three things Corecadsu settled upon 
as means to reach the end he sought, 
and they, using his own words in telling 
the story brokenly in the English tongue, 
are these : — 

" If I will be stand high in my coun- 
try, / must have character, and so I pro- 
hibit myself from everything that is not 
good for me. If I will be fitted to be 
officer under my government, then / 
must have knowledge ; and so I make 
myself to be industry — to study all that 
I can and not lose my good health. If 
I am to have good position in my soci- 
ety, / must have money ; and so I not 



How the Heathen went on. \ I 

spend it foolish when I have so little, 
that when I myself earn and have my 
more, I do just same." 

These are what the heathen boy of 
fourteen started with. We shall see 
what they did for him. 

As to character : — 

Drinking wine and smoking were 
almost universal among the youth of 
his class and years in his native village ; 
but, putting his purpose into practice, 
he forswore at once wholly and forever 
both habits ; and in the wider range 
that includes all that goes to make up 
a true boy, and thus prepares for a true 
man, he sought to be perfect, bringing 
himself, as he states it, to the bar of his 
own judgment for approval or condem- 
nation every night. 

With reference to study : — 

The course at the preparatory school 



4 2 The Story of a Heathen. 

and in college was hard ; the prescribed 
hours were many ; the necessity for 
intense application, if the highest was 
to be reached, was imperative ; but 
with steady perseverance, concentrated 
thought, indomitable will, he satisfied 
each hour's demand, and closed each 
day in triumph. 

Of the one hundred and nineteen 
who entered the course with him, only 
thirty-seven graduated at the end of the 
six years, of whom he was first in 
deportment and third in scholarship. 

In the matter of money : — 

The allowance for board, books, and 
tuition, which, from their meager means 
the family were able to make, was six 
yen a month, about $4.80 in United 
States currency. 

His food was plain ; his bed just 
answered his need ; his incidental ex- 



How the Heathen zvent on. 43 

penses were reduced to the minimum ; 
and so it was possible, with the cheap 
living in Japan at that time, to obtain 
for this small sum the necessaries that 
pertained to his college life. 

As a specimen of his economy, it may 
be stated that the fascinating jinriki- 
sha, a large baby-carriage drawn by a 
stalwart man and sometimes by two, and 
moving from four to six miles an hour, 
was being introduced ; but, during all 
the years of his college life, instead of 
riding to and from the school at the 
beginning and end of terms and at 
other times, he always walked, thus 
saving the few sen that payment for 
transportation would require, for needs 
absolutely imperative. 

In choosing his college course, as 
offering the most that his country could 
in the direction in which his thoughts 



44 The Story of a Heathen. 

were steadily turned, he had chosen the 
study of medicine, and at the end of the 
six years he received the degree of 
sotsugio-sei, which signifies, in English, 
doctor of medicine — m.d. 

In the same year he also passed the 
state or civil examination for license to 
practice medicine anywhere in the em- 
pire. This examination was so severe 
that less than twenty per cent, of those 
presenting themselves passed, and were 
admitted to that class and rank to which 
a certificate from the Royal Examining 
Board was the passport. 




o 
5 

3 
< 



r 6 

P< c 
(■■) ^ 

§ & 

Z 

o 

c 
u 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE HEATHEN AT THE CAPITAL. 
STEPS UPWARD. — LIFE IN TOKYO. 

FOLLOWING the bent of his mind, 
and with the one intent to prepare 
himself for any place of usefulness and 
responsibility that might open to him, 
Corecadsu resolved, when his college 
days were over, to leave his native vil- 
lage and seek further professional and 
intellectual enlargement in the capital of 
the empire. 

Living up to his conception of what 
was absolutely needful for ultimate and 
the largest success — character, knowl- 
edge, industry, economy — he had led 
(with his apprehension of right) a 

45 



46 The Story of a Heathen. 

stainless, studious, prudent life, until 
the habit of right-doing, the habit of 
industrious application, the habit of fru- 
gality, had each become fixed. 

Tokyo was seven hundred miles dis- 
tant from his native village and island, 
and by such conveyance as the country 
afforded he reached in due time the 
new seat of the government of the now 
awakening empire. 

All that his family could possibly give 
him toward his support in his new situa- 
tion was ten yen a month, about eight 
dollars of American money. 

With this, as at college, he had to pay 
for food, lodging, books, tuition, and 
such incidental expenses as absolutely 
pertained to his new situation. 

It need hardly be added that a bowl 
of rice with vegetables and occasionally 
fish was not as costly a diet as canned 



The Heathen at the Capital. 47 

staples and delicacies, brought into his 
country from other and distant climes, 
would have been. 

Entering the department of surgery 
in Tokyo University, he studied with 
a diligence that knew no abatement for 
two years. He had acquired a good use 
of the German tongue while in college, 
and so he was prepared to get the most 
out of his German text-books, and 
secure the greatest benefit from the in- 
struction of the German professors. 

At the end of this time he graduated 
with honor, and at twenty-two, eight 
years after entering the preparatory 
school, with an equipment that had 
been slowly, steadily, surely, and yet 
grandly acquired (as it always is if one 
ever has it), he was ready for the prac- 
tical service and duties of active life. 

The first opening, and one wholly in 



48 The Story of a Heathen. 

harmony with his aspirations, was as- 
sistant surgeon in the Imperial Japa- 
nese Navy, and afterwards, something 
higher, as there always is, if one begins 
at the lowest level ; and so with eighty- 
one others he made application for the 
position. 

These eighty-one young men were 
from different provinces in the empire. 
Most of them belonged to the higher 
classes. Many of them were connected 
by acquaintance or blood with those 
already in the imperial service ; but true 
to her new, if not old, custom, and true 
in its widest sense the world over, all 
had the same chance : the best to be 
the winners. 

The government examination, which 
ended in the rejection of the candidate, 
or his recommendation for office to the 
Naval Department, was all-comprehen- 
sive and terribly severe. 



The Heathen at the Capital. 49 

The first examination was wholly 
physical. Each young man was meas- 
ured in every part of his body, and if 
there was the slightest malformation or 
physical defect, the examination pro- 
ceeded no further. 

If the perfect natural physical stand- 
ard was reached, next came what per- 
tained to the use that the young man 
had made in the way of healthful devel- 
opment of his animal powers. 

Erect standing, walking, running, 
jumping, striking with the fist or 
hand, power of muscle in lifting, throw- 
ing, and sustaining heavy weights, clear- 
ness and intensity of vision, lung power, 
etc., by protracted or most violent pro- 
cesses revealing any weakness that lack 
of development or bad habits of any phy- 
sical sort had fixed. 

Of the eighty-one who entered upon 



50 The Story of a Heathen. 

this examination twenty-seven failed 
and fifty-four passed to the second, that 
of the theory and practice of medicine, 
surgery, etc. 

The third examination was as severe 
as it was unique. 

The candidate was taken into an 
apartment in the government buildings 
with a grim officer, elderly and learned, 
and a young man whose employment 
answers to that of our stenographer ; 
and for hours questions relating to 
widely different subjects suited to show 
the readiness of mind and the natural 
and acquired ability of the applicant, 
were rapidly put. 

First, the young man was commanded 
to tell the history of his life — all about 
it, either good or bad, favorable or un- 
favorable. Then came the questioning ; 
for instance : — 



The Heathen at the Capital. 5 l 
11 What is your opinion upon 



features of the present government 
policy?" 

"Was the recent course of 

government official justified by either 
reason or expediency ? " 

" What is your estimate of the char- 
acter of (noted person in Japanese 

history)?" 

" From present indications, and from 
the characteristics of her people, what is 
Japan likely to become financially, com- 
mercially, religiously, during the next 
half-century ? " 

" What would you do in cir- 
cumstances if called to immediate and 
definite action ? " 

"What should be the highest ambi- 
tion of every young man ? " 

" How can success in any department 
of work be most certainly reached?" 



5 2 The Story cf a Heathen. 

This was continued until the wideness 
and positiveness of the candidate's gen- 
eral knowledge, his readiness of thought 
and expression, and his powers of mind 
in reasoning and analysis, found in the 
answers to these questions, all taken 
down by the ready writer, were on 
record, and therefore available for sub- 
sequent examination and comparison. 

Of the fifty-four .who entered upon 
these two last examinations, only seven 
were approbated and commended for 
the desired positions, of whom Core- 
cadsu stood first, and in October, 1884, 
he received his appointment as assistant 
surgeon in the Japanese Imperial Navy, 
and entered upon the duties of his office 
at the principal naval station of the 
empire. 

It should be said here, and in truth 
must be said, that besides his perpetual 



The Heathen at the Capital. 53 

striving- after the highest character, the 
widest knowledge, the best habits of 
industry and economy, he was all the 
time wholly in harmony with all that 
was healthful in sports and pure in 
pleasure. 

He could row with the best ; he 
could play athletic games well ; his 
feats of walking were remarkable. His 
were noble purposes, working them- 
selves out through a healthy mind by 
the help of a healthy body, all its 
powers healthfully developed and care- 
fully conserved. A like development 
and conservation of one's powers are 
possible in the case of any one in college, 
on a farm, learning a trade, anywhere. 

One of the positive requirements of 
his father from the first was an exact 
statement at the end of every month, 
date following date, item following item, 



54 The Story of a Heathen. 

of every sen that he had expended, and 
for what it had been paid. From his 
fourteenth year to his twenty-second such 
a statement was rendered in exact con- 
formity to his fathers command, so that 
at the end of his university course he 
knew the exact amount that his educa- 
tion had cost, and how, and why, and 
where, every mill (English) had gone. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HEATHEN'S TRANSFORMATION. 
A THOUGHTFUL DECISION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 

T)ORN in a heathen land, the child of 
heathen parents, Corecadsu was 
early and faithfully taught the idolatrous 
observances of his family and his nation. 
Up to his fourteenth year nothing had 
interrupted his stated worship of the 
sun, moon, other forces of nature, the 
emperor, heroes, great men, with other 
incidental practices pertaining to the 
ceremonial of the Shinto or Buddha 
belief. 

About this time several young men, 
whose homes were in his native village, 
and who had become Christians while 

55 



56 The Story of a Heathen. 

attending a government school where 
an American teacher taught military 
tactics and the sciences in English, and 
who, not being permitted to teach 
Christianity, did a better thing — lived 
it, returned to their homes and with 
proper zeal commended to him the new 
faith. 

These Christian young men met with 
opposition everywhere. Many of them 
suffered persecution ; and to not a few 
the doors of home were closed by 
parents whose fealty to old beliefs was 
stronger than parental love. It is but 
just to say that these young men stood 
the test — the test that comes to every 
new-born child of God everywhere ; and 
to-day they are the leaders of theological 
thought in the empire, many of them 
pastors of native churches and all of 
them loyal to the conquering Christ. 



The Heathen s Transformation. 5 7 

In common with others older, opposi- 
tion violent and positive at once arose 
in the mind of Corecadsu against " the 
Christianity." 

He was loyal to his father's belief, as 
he thought he ought to be. He was 
loyal to his government, which had for- 
bidden those who came as teachers from 
other lands to promulgate a foreign 
faith. He was loyal to the lessons of 
recent Japanese history, as he read 
them, covering the bloody story of more 
than two centuries. 

But, acting up to his highest light, 
putting himself in the only possible right 
place for any unsettled person, old or 
young, to be, with his mind honestly 
open to truth, he resolved to investigate 
a subject that was beginning to attract 
attention ; and so, for eight years, in 
school, in college, in university, in the 



5 8 The Story of a Heathen. 

interstices of daily study and in vaca- 
tions, he compared the Bible, especially 
the New Testament, with his own sacred 
books, read what unbelievers living in 
other lands said against Christianity, and 
what believers similarly circumstanced 
said for it, and especially contrasted the 
lives of the few whom he knew who were 
Christians with the lives of his whole na- 
tion (generally speaking) who were not. 
It was a long and honest investiga- 
tion, but it ended, as all sincere quests 
for truth will end, in an intellectual 
decision to embrace " the Christianity" 
which eight years before he despised 
and would have joined with others older 
in attempts to crush. He decided to for- 
sake the old and embrace the new, leave 
Buddha and take Christ ; leave (liter- 
ally) father and mother, brother and 
sister, for His sake, and the Gospel's, 



The Heathen s Transformation. 59 

It is easy to become a Christian in 
a Christian land where the tide always 
sets that way and where popularity waits 
upon the decision. But consider what it 
was to decide for Christ in Japan when 
this decision was made ! 

But the intellectual decision was not 
all or the greatest. Confession in the 
presence of two persons — a man and a 
woman, whose names are household 
words in America as well as Japan, and 
the value of whose work in the empire 
eternity only can estimate — followed ; 
then came confession before God of his 
new purpose, with an entire consecration 
of himself to his new Master, all of which 
was attended by the baptism of the Holy 
Spirit, always to be expected the world 
over when the intellectual decision and 
the total soul-surrender accompanying 
it are similar to his in purpose and 



60 The Story of a Heathen. 

completeness. The completing act was 
his baptism by water and his uniting 
with the First Church in Tokyo, in 
March, 1884. 




Summer Dress. 

(From life.) 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE TRANSFORMED HEATHEN^ CRUCIAL 
TEST. 

LIFE AT A NAVAL STATION. A BEGINNING. 

A T the naval station where Core- 
cadsu was ordered to report him- 
self for immediate service after his 
appointment as assistant surgeon, there 
were a score of persons occupying the 
same position, a less number filling a 
higher place, with a chief officer in su- 
preme command, none of whom were 
Christians, and most, if not all, of whom 
were silent enemies, if not active op- 
posers, of the Christian religion. 

Consider the young man in his new 
situation. 

6x 



62 The Story of a Heathen. 

Peace at least and probable prefer- 
ment depended very largely upon the 
favor of the chief officer and his good 
standing with those in the rank above 
him ; and hence all desire for personal 
tranquillity, and every demand of world- 
ly ambition included conformity to the 
ways and will of the vast majority. 

Among the assistant and full sur- 
geons at the station were some who had 
known him in his native island Kiushiu, 
and in Tokyo. 

True to the principles of Japanese 
goodfellowship, and loyal to the religion 
of the empire, they said to him at the 
outset, and respectfully, that it was 
useless and foolhardy and might be 
costly to him to even try to be a Chris- 
tian in his new situation ; that the first 
thing and the best thing for him to do 
was to throw his Bible into the sea, re- 



The Tra?tsformed Heathen s Test. 63 

nounce his allegiance to his new Master, 
and go back to the faiths that had found 
acceptance with his people for twenty- 
five hundred years. 

But the response first to importunity, 
and afterwards to banter and ridicule 
and threat alike, was : " I am a Chris- 
tian. Whatever comes I shall not be 
false to my religion, turn away from *any 
service which my Master appoints, or 
shirk any burden He asks me to bear." 

Of course this was assumed to be 
a declaration of war, and during the 
months immediately following a system 
of persecution was devised and carried 
out, the scope and bitterness of which 
can only be hinted. 

Services were exacted of him of a 
character in nowise pertaining to the 
office which he held. 

Duties were demanded altogether 



64 The Story of a Heathen, 

without the ordinary routine of a sur- 
geon's life. 

His conscientious observance of the 
Lord's day was systematically interfered 
with. 

Invitations from superior officers and 
others, which under other circumstances 
it would have been the gravest of of- 
fences to have refused, poured in upon 
him to accompany them on the Sabbath 
to the theatre and other places of amuse- 
ment ; at other times to " tea-houses," 
where sake, or beer, is drunk with those 
in attendance, "whose steps take hold 
on hell." 

He was the target of many a gibe, 
the butt of ceaseless ridicule, because he 
spent no money for tobacco or wine, or 
in other ways which are nameless. 

To the persecutions that pertained to 
his business he responded by the most 



The Transformed Heathen s Test. 65 

willing, ready, complete submission to 
the commands of his superior officers ; 
and his discharge of these orders, how- 
ever disagreeable, and, in the eyes of 
others, however humiliating and dis- 
graceful, was cheerful, prompt, complete. 

To the persecutions with regard to 
the Sabbath and other things, he simply 
asserted his legal and moral right to 
spend the Lord's day in his own way; 
and that no rule of etiquette or custom 
of society could possibly stand as high 
or be as binding as the command to 
" honor God, and depart from evil." 

Soon the assistant surgeon's faithful- 
ness and ability in the discharge of all 
the duties belonging to his position, his 
faithful execution of all orders from his 
superior officers, whatever their char- 
acter, his industry in his study and his 
work, began to tell and to win upon 



66 The Story of a Heathen. 

those in authority ; and they began to 
feel, and some of them to say, that if 
Christianity made men of this character 
it would be invaluable to the empire, 
whatever it might be to the individual ; 
and the rigor of disagreeable demand 
abated. 

Meantime, by divine ordering, as we 
are justified in saying, the President of 
the Naval Hospital was removed to 
another of the same character, in a dis- 
tant part of the country, and one equal 
in rank put in his place, whose wife was 
a Christian, and who, though not him- 
self a believer, became the friend of the 
persecuted officer, and who soon re- 
moved him from all disagreeable asso- 
ciations by giving him an independent 
position in a distinct department of the 
service at the station. 

But simply bearing for the Master's 



The Transformed Heathen s Test. 67 

sake had never been enough for the 
officer. He must not only bear, but do. 

The city, contiguous to the naval 
station of which the hospital and other 
government buildings formed a part, had 
a population of about twenty thousand. 
Of these, when Corecadsu entered the 
government service, there was but one 
person who had professed Christianity. 
This individual had united with a church 
in Tokyo, but removing to this wholly 
heathen city, he was overcome by ad- 
verse influences ; had lost his first faith 
and had gone back to his old life. 

Each officer under the Japanese gov- 
ernment, according to a custom of the 
country, has a house of his own, where- 
in his food is prepared, and a place for 
lodging provided, with an additional 
room for the reception of friends and 
other kindred purposes. 



68 The Story of a Heathen. 

Soon after his arrival at the naval 
station, the assistant surgeon proposed 
to open his house for a regular Sabbath 
service. 

At the first meeting two persons made 
up the entire audience, Corecadsu and 
the backslidden Christian whom he had 
sought and found. 

For weeks following, the number in 
attendance was no larger, but soon the 
leaven of love and prayer began to 
move in hearts cold and dead. Four 
came, then six, then eight, then ten, 
by-and-by a roomful, and our officer, 
impelled thereto by the circumstances 
around him and the voice of God within 
him, took on a new vocation — added to 
his prescribing for the sick body the 
proclamation of Christ's unfailing pre- 
scription for the dying soul! 

The Holy Spirit was manifestly and 



The Transformed Heathen 's Test. 69 

on some occasions thrillingly present in 
these services. Prayer became an en- 
gine of irresistible power. 

Those who had opposed Christianity, 
and ridiculed, reviled, and persecuted its 
defender and representative, became ten- 
der, then solicitous, then filled with the 
never-to-be-forgotten joy of pardoned 
sin. 

The work went on. 

Men and women passing along the 
street intent on matters wholly apart 
paused to hear the singing of hymns 
ascribing thanksgiving and praise, not to 
Buddha, but to the everywhere present 
Christ, and to listen to the unwonted 
words of prayer, not to an idol, but to 
God. 

Opposition greatly diminished. Con- 
verts were multiplied, until in July, 1886, 
a church was formed of thirty-one mem- 



JO The Story of a Heathen. 

bers, which a little more than twelve 
months afterwards was five times as 
large as it was at its beginning. 

Many of the very men, officers under 
the government, whose opposition and 
persecution were at the first so bitter, 
became then, and have become since, 
Christians, and are now faithful, zealous, 
energetic, consecrated workers for Christ. 

Meantime the formation of other 
churches in the neighborhood is in con- 
templation or has already taken place, 
and the evangelization of the whole city 
waits upon the golden day of which this 
was the auspicious dawn. 

Three months afterwards, in Septem- 
ber, 1886, the government, knowing the 
profession, the life, of its officer ; know- 
ing all that he had done to introduce the 
religion of the Lord Jesus Christ among 
those in the imperial service and the 



The Transformed Heathen s Test. 7 1 

community generally, promoted him to 
the full rank of surgeon and accorded 
to him privileges from which every one 
up to that date had been wholly de- 
barred. 

Northern navigators say that off the 
coast of Greenland there is an island 
which was evidently shot up by some 
subterranean convulsion, that is almost 
wholly a mass of rock, rising in perpen- 
dicular majesty to an amazing height, 
against which, as its worn sides demon- 
strate, Old Ocean, through geologic 
periods, wrathful at the intruders pres- 
ence, dashed and beat, but which now, 
from some change of currents or other 
unknown causes, only feels the subdued, 
invisible, and gentle ripple of the same 
ocean at its conquering base. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SUCCEEDING EVENTS IN OUR HERO'S 
HISTORY. 

^pHEM that honor me I will honor." 
Two years in the service of the 
Japanese government ; the wonderful 
progress that civilization and Christian- 
ity had made in the empire during that 
time ; the fact more and more apparent 
that both in State and Church he who 
would stand highest and, other things 
being equal, be most influential must 
have all that a foreign education and the 
English tongue could bring him, deter- 
mined Corecadsu that he would seek in 
one of the leading universities of the 
United States, and if Providence opened 

72 




Boy of the New Japan. 



Succeeding Events. J$ 

the way, in England or Germany, the 
completest qualification that it was possi- 
ble for him to have for the discharge of 
the duties of his government office in 
the profession he had chosen. 

And here what seemed an insur- 
mountable obstacle presented itself. By 
a rule of the department in which he 
was serving, no officer could, on any 
pretext, have leave of absence with 
continued pay who had not been in the 
service five years. Corecadsu, for many 
reasons, desired to go at once. 

Such education as he could further 
have he wanted immediately — wanted 
at the beginning of his career, and es- 
pecially he wished to be in his own 
country in the days not far in the future 
when the governmental policy of Japan 
was to be settled perhaps for all time. 

True to his simple belief that the 



74 The Story of a Heathen. 

heavenly Father would do for his chil- 
dren whatever they asked him to do, 
which in His sight would be for their 
good and His glory, he made known his 
desire to his church and asked that the 
prayers of the brethren and sisters might 
be united with his in a common petition 
that the way might be somehow opened. 

Application was made to the proper 
authorities for opportunity to pursue a 
course of foreign study ; his reasons for 
the request were clearly stated and the 
desire was modestly expressed that the 
government grant the wish of its loyal 
subject. 

The matter was referred to the head 
of the Naval Department, with commen- 
dations from those in highest authority; 
the story of his life and character was 
told ; and at the emperor's command he 
was granted leave of absence for four 



Succeeding Events. 75 

years on partial pay, and ordered to re- 
port to his government once in six 
months. 

And now, another and signal honor 
was done him. 

The emperor, having learned some- 
thing, as we have seen, of his faithful, 
loyal, studious, scholarly Christian sub- 
ject, desired to see him before his de- 
parture from his country, and a command 
for him to appear in his presence was 
issued. 

The time of the sailing of Corecadsu 
was already set. His passage money 
had been paid, and the steamer was to 
leave Yokohama for San Francisco, three 
days before the time fixed in the royal 
summons for the interview. 

This fact was communicated to the 
emperor, and to suit the convenience of 
this Christian surgeon in his navy, the 



J 6 The Story of a Heathen. 

day named for his presentation was 
changed to one earlier. 

On the morning designated, dressed 
in the uniform appointed for one of his 
office, and wearing the insignia of his 
position as an officer in the imperial ser- 
vice, he entered the presence of the 
man who was worshiped but a few r years 
before as God by thirty-eight million of 
subjects. 

Every honor compatible with the re- 
lation was done to the youthful surgeon. 
An act of idolatrous worship that was 
then required at the royal Court was 
waived in deference to his known reli- 
gious belief, and in closing the interview 
the emperor said, as much in suggestion 
as in command: " Study carefully, up- 
hold the honor of the empire while you 
are gone, and when you come back 
serve the emperor to the best of your 



Succeeding Events. 7 7 

ability." And that night the steamship 
bore him away from the country where 
for long and busy years he had toiled 
steadily on and up, and which with loyal 
heart and lips he covenanted to serve 
to his last, on to the end of his mortal 
life. 

Eighteen days later, with the ocean 
peril past, the harbor of San Francisco 
was reached, and six days afterwards he 
was welcomed in the heart of an eastern 
city by one who, knowing something of 
his history, had become his friend. 

The study of the language and the 
further study of his profession were at 
once begun, and have been prosecuted 
since with surprising results. 

In May, 1887, an imperial order came 
promoting him to the rank of " Shoha- 
chii," a Japanese order of great honor, 
and later in the year he was selected to 



yS The Story of a Heathen. 

represent the empire in an International 
Congress, held in the city of Washing- 
ton, which for the ability and high stand- 
ing of its members has rarely, if ever, 
been equaled. 

To add to all this, in answer to 
prayer, his family have all become Chris- 
tians, so that with father and mother and 
sisters on one side of the world and son 
on the other, the common prayer of all 
finds hearing before the common throne 
of a common God. 

From the American university where 
he entered as a student, he graduated 
with high honor, going over a three 
years' course in fourteen months ; and 
the next day after graduation sailed for 
Germany, where he is finishing his 
school education in, perhaps, the best 
medical and other universities in Europe 
or the world. 



Succeeding Events. 79 

His connection with his empire is 
growing more and more close and more 
and more honorable to him, and his 
constant prayer is to be " filled with all 
the fulness of God," so that he may 
be his highest and do his best for his 
government and the souls of his emanci- 
pated and waiting and aspiring country- 
men. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CONCLUSION. 
WHY THE STORY HAS BEEN TOLD. 

r I ^HE world wants tens of thou- 
sands of grandmothers to start 
boys and girls upward. None can do it 
better ; few as well. Room and work 
for grandmothers ! 

The world wants hundreds of thou- 
sands of parents who will put minimum 
money where it will do maximum good. 

The world wants millions of boys who 
will " prohibit " themselves from every- 
thing that will work injury to body or 
soul, as our "heathen" did; and who 
will say with him : "I must have char- 
acter ; I must have knowledge ; I must 
80 



The Conclusion. 81 

be industrious ; I must be economical" ; 
and who will then build these musts into 
grand manhood, better and higher. 

The world wants tens of millions of 
young men who have been transformed, 
as the subject of this sketch was. 

They are wanted to plant the King's 
banner all over the world ! 

Japan wants five hundred young men 
and young women, every twelve months 
for the next five years. That will make 
her a Christian nation. 

China wants a thousand a year for the 
next fifty years. That would settle the 
trend of four hundred million of the 
human race. 

The " Dark Continent" will take all 
the world can spare for the next century; 
and then the clock of time, striking the 
last hour of 1999, will send a hallelujah 
sound all over the earth, which will 



82 The Story of a Heathen. 

mean, " Ethiopia is converted unto 
God ! " 

Every department of business here at 
home wants men who will write on it: 
" Holiness to the Lord ; " and will con- 
secrate its gains to the service of the 
Master. That will hasten the time when 
"The kingdoms of this world are be- 
come the kingdoms of our Lord, and of 
his Christ ; and he shall reign for ever 
and ever." 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





lllllgi 



016 060 897 3 



■< 



. 



M 

I 

1 

m 

■ 

HI 

m 

I 

B 

m H 

IB 



■ 









